FF 5.2 | Overview & Sequence

Classroom

Jan 17

Blues Teacher Guide

Blues is one of my favorite things to teach beginning guitar players. Not only is the form and style of the blues ubiquitous in pop music, studying blues soloing is the perfect way to start playing single note lines.

1 Teacher Prep & Materials

MATERIALS

Class guitars and picks
Headphones to listen to 1:1 devices
High quality playback system
Electric guitars and amps*
Bass guitars and amps*
Drum set *
Vocal mic(s)*
*optional

UNIT PREP

To prepare for this unit, listen to as much blues as possible to become familiar with the style, language, and the notable artists from the differet playlists in the listen section. Take time to learn some blues language from the soloing tab by transcribing some of the licks and start to get the language in your ear by singing through solos that you like. It is important when teaching these lessons to be as authentic and possible in their delivery by approaching the blues as an oral tradition. The best thing to do to be able to teach this way is to try playing some blues guitar yourself.

SEQUENCING AND PACING

I usually spend 3-4 weeks on the blues unit and I follow the sequence order presented in the unit contents. It is important to structure practice time when learning different elements of the blues into timed sections and to change the modality and subject of what is being covered within the lesson to keep it exciting. After covering the baseline knowledge in the chords, bass, and soloing sections, I like to break up a class period into 15 minute chunks where students can then do further study of each section at their own pace using 1:1 devices- this helps with differentiation (15 minutes on chords, 15 minutes on bass, 15 minutes on soloing in the same period). Depending on your teaching situation, you might choose to do formal evaluation for the chord, bass, and solo section, but I tend to do informal evaluations of these sections to keep the momentum of the unit going and save the formal evaluation for the final exam assessment.

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